'Whatever happens, that a struggle lies ahead is obvious, but the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is nothing if not resilient' - Liam Rudden

2020 would have been my 39th consecutive Fringe having worked the event every August, first as an actor, then as playwright, director, reviewer, producer and, for the past 17 years as the Entertainment Editor of the Evening News.

That’s a lot of plays, musicals, stand up routines and fair few experiences that purported to be ‘art’ but have yet to be properly categorised.

This year, I’d planned a quiet Festival directing just three productions, the award-winning Thief and two world premieres - my new play Fallen Angel and Robin Mitchell’s provocatively titled comedy, The Fringe Is Sh*te.

All three, of course, have now been pushed back to 2021, by which time some semblance of ‘normality’ should have returned.

That’s reliant on a vaccine being found, or Covid mysteriously disappearing as quickly as it appeared (no, I don’t believe that’s going to happen either), which is why I’ve spent the last few weeks working out a way to present all three pieces as socially distanced works with socially distanced audiences.

Like the producers of The Mousetrap, which is set to reopen on London’s West End in October, I am lucky in that the three pieces I was due to direct benefit from staging that is naturally social distanced.

Two are solo shows, just a single actor and an audience, while the third is a two-hander, in which it is appropriate to keep the characters the required distance apart.

The audience on the other hand... well, I had plans to resurrect an idea I first discussed with acclaimed Polish actor, director and producer Tomek Borkowy quite a few years ago now.

Then it was to be an experiment. Now it just seems sensible. The concept is simple, isolate audience members by seating them individually on stools randomly placed around the venue, all well apart from each other.

As the action unfolded in the spaces between them, audience members would then be able to concentrate on the performance without the distraction noisy sweet papers and fidgeting companions.

Initially, the idea was also to introduce an element of unease into the experience, conversely, in today’s climate, it may well achieve the opposite effect.

Of course, while such a concept is a possible on the Fringe circuit, it’s unlikely to work for mainstream productions.

This Fringe, two of the shows I had in the diary were one-man performances, the other a two-hander.

Consequently, with just one ASM to stage manage each show, social distancing of the company was simple.

The audience too, which we had already restricted to just 12 a performance for the solo shows, could be easily spaced - the venue, a cellar lit only by storm lamps was wonderfully atmospheric but limited in capacity.

Again, ideal for an over-saturated Fringe where there are never enough bums for all the seats in any given day as more than 3,000 performances a day vie for attention, but not exactly suitable for commercial producers looking to put on large scale productions and bring in the big bucks.

As mainstream theatre cautiously feels its way into a new post-Covid landscape, it will be the small-scale productions that first tempt audiences back - many main houses are already exploring the use of alternative spaces, something their Fringe counterparts have long done, often through necessity.

And I have to say, some of the most exciting theatre I have seen has been performed in just such site-specific and interactive spaces.

Whatever happens, that a struggle lies ahead is obvious, but theatre is nothing if not resilient and, really, during the current enforced hiatus, there has never been a better time to re-evaluate what is already a failing business model and make it more accessible to a wider audience.

Roll on the 2021 Edinburgh Fringe. I suspect it may well be the most exciting yet.

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